Session 2

Food Policy Councils (FPCs) have emerged as critical spaces for rethinking the food system from the ground up. However, they face a fundamental challenge: how to ensure that their composition truly reflects the complexity and diversity of the food system. This requires going beyond sectoral silos—e.g., agriculture, health, food assistance—to embrace a systemic perspective that accounts for the interconnections between production, distribution, consumption, waste, and care.

Many FPCs are caught in a structural tension. On the one hand, limited participation—dominated by public authorities or a single set of actors—risks reproducing partial or siloed approaches. On the other hand, broad but fragmented participation can dilute decision-making capacity, hinder accountability, and prevent systemic change. It also means that if the FPC's composition merely reflects the status quo, the resulting policies will only reinforce the existing food system. Similarly, if the council's composition over-represents certain transformative niches, the resulting policies might appear unfeasible to policymakers or lose touch with the broader needs of the city.

This session explores how FPCs operating in different contexts—urban and rural, Global North and South, grassroots-led and institutionally embedded—navigate this tension. We ask: 

• How are members selected, and how does this process dynamically shape both policy outcomes and the potential for food system transformation?

• How do FPCs negotiate the tension between accurately representing the food system as it is and taking timely action to transform it?

Grounded in case studies and research, the session invites participants to reflect on deeper political and ethical questions that underpin the role of FPCs in shaping food systems: Whose knowledge counts? Who decides? And what kind of food systems are we building when we choose who is at the table—and who is not?

In this session:

Civil Society as instigators and hosts of Food Policy Councils (Wissmann)

• Founding and running Food Policy Councils "from below" comes with a specific set of challenges, but might also bring additional degrees of freedom to imagine and to act on the transformation of food systems. There will be a short presentation of observations from the German-speaking FPC network, followed by an opportunity to compare experiences from across Europe.

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Representativeness and Diversity of Stakeholders (Bartholomé)

• If we want to influence the food system, can we really afford to do so without involving so-called conventional actors, such as supermarkets? How can we bring as many key players in the food system as possible to the table—fostering mutual understanding and awareness of the challenges—without alienating the most committed stakeholders or getting stuck in unproductive rhetoric?

Tracing Democratic Innovations: A Longitudinal Perspective on Nutrire Trento, Food Policy Council in Turin (Andreola)

• Food policy councils (FPCs) are increasingly seen as key governance tools to shape fair and sustainable food systems by bringing together different voices in the food system. But how do these councils actually represent these different stakeholders: farmers, politicians, businesses and communities? This study examines Nutrire Trento, a FPC in Italy, to understand how these councils evolve, especially during challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. By analysing key moments in this process, we uncover what helps or hinders their work. The results offer practical lessons for FPCs around the world on strengthening participation, adapting to change and democratising food systems.

Deconstructing the 'Food Production' Category: Transatlantic Perspectives on Representing the Farming Community in Food Policy Councils (Haley Parzonko)

• This case examines the representation of the farming community in Food Policy Councils (FPCs) across the US and UK through 25 interviews with FPC leaders. Our research interrogates the prevalent monolithic categorization of ‘food production’ in FPCs, revealing significant diversity and exclusion within farming representation. Context-specific dynamics shape participant composition, creating varying opportunities and constraints that influence who represents 'food production' in FPCs. We highlight three central challenges: the 'food production' umbrella problem; under-representation of 'missing voices' from marginalized groups to dominant players; and challenges associated with direct versus indirect representation forms.

The Mississippi Story (Noel Didla)

• Mississippi is one of the poorest states in America while being one of the most fertile areas in the country that imports over 90% of its food. As a state whose historical legacy was intricately tied to enslavement and plantation economies, Mississippi's black, brown, indigenous and poor people have been contending with centuries and decades of bad policy and unnerving leadership that continues to inform hunger, food insecurity, health outcomes , underemployment and poverty across urban and rural areas of the state. The Mississippi Food Policy Council, in a statewide partnership with other institutions engaged in an analysis of power, a mapping of relationships and an articulation of core beliefs, values and principles framework and launched its three pronged cultural-economic-social change approach to transforming Mississippi's Food Systems and Regional Economies.

Ensuring transparency and participation in food councils (Eloisa Caixeta Cunha)

• The human right to adequate food requires that individuals have continuous physical and economic access to adequate food. Transparency and participation are crucial for realizing this right. However, the profit-driven nature of commercial actors often creates conflicts of interest in Food Policy Councils (FPCs), risking "corporate capture" and undermining public interest. Powerful corporations can dominate these spaces, marginalizing civil society and people in situations of vulnerability. To counter this, FPCs must establish clear rules promoting meaningful participation from all rights holders, explicitly addressing power, preventing undue influence, and ensuring decisions prioritize human rights over profit. This is essential for truly rights-based and people-centered food systems.